Delay on a KLM Airbus

Last week, I took my girlfriend on a surprise trip to the island of St. Maarten. I had booked a Flying Blue Award Ticket a while back, so could fly there relatively cheap. We flew there and back in a KLM Airbus A330, as unfortunately the KLM 747 had been taken off the route a few weeks earlier…

There will be a full flight report video about the flight -to- St. Maarten, or SXM. And originally I hadn’t planned to video the flight back, but as there were so many issues and delays, right from the start, I thought ‘why not keep my camera handy, and see how it goes’. The result is this video – one about issues, problems and delay.

First off, we got the message that the aircraft was to heavy for the local runway and conditions, and we’d have to make an extra stop to re-fuel. Then, after landing for that stop, the crew noticed a minor problem with one the engines that had to be checked out.

During the flight there was turbulence and close to landing at AMS we got the message that there was fog and a lot of traffic waiting to land, and so we’d have to maintain a holding pattern for a good while. Then we landed on the Polderbaan runway (which takes forever to taxi from/to) and finally when we got to the gate, the gate was still occupied with another aircraft. So… enough to keep us entertained! 😉

In the end we arrived a little over 3 hours late at the gate in Amsterdam. I’ve had worse, but think the combination of issues makes it interesting. I hope you enjoy watching this video!

Have you flown KLM to St. Maarten? On a 747 or more recently on a A330?